


Fading

by bexacaust



Category: Naruto
Genre: Dementia, F/M, canon compliance, headcanons ahoy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:40:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23727727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bexacaust/pseuds/bexacaust
Summary: I think back to whenLife was good, I was contentBut it’s been so many yearsI can’t remember how it feels
Relationships: Jiraiya/Tsunade (Naruto)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 9





	Fading

Every morning since she won her bet- and every evening since she learned the real meaning of bad luck; she walked to a grave so few visited. She sat and spoke in hushed tones in the closest to a holy place she had left, and raised her glass in a bitter toast to the one person who’s promise to return she had actually believed after so long.

The years and the seasons pass.

She’s older now, pushing gently past sixty on to seventy. Her visits continue though the breezes seem barbed and awaken the aches in her joints and back but still she visits with a little token of liquor, a little bundle of wildflowers. Her hair is grey, and greyer- her steps are dwindling into a shuffle and it takes longer and longer to get to the grave as the name wears off from spring rain and winter snow.

The years and the seasons pass.

She’s eighty, she’s eighty-five, and then disaster strikes so quietly, so calmly. It starts in simple moments; Forgetting her glasses, forgetting where she left something… something important. Was it a key, was it jewelry, was it something more important than even those?

She carries little tokens to a now unmarked grave, wobbling as her back slowly bends from her abilities no longer able to mask the passage of time. She doesn’t remember why she masked it to begin with, and doesn’t notice when her adopted-or-better grandson speaks quietly to well-dressed men who look at her with such pity.

She’ll remember later, she has a place to be- armed with tea and cosmos now, her aging stomach no longer accepting of sharp liquor and her hands too sore to snap the stems of wild violets or forget-me-nots.

The years, and the seasons, pass.

She is ninety-seven and three quarters, her great grandchildren insist its important. Well.

She’s fairly certain they are her great grandchildren- it’s become so hard for her to… to remember. But still, every morning, and every evening- armed with tea and cosmos and lillies and violets she treks out to this odd stone in it’s quiet clearing. And some days she brings duties with her- scrolls and paperwork, crochet with the intent of saving the motion in her old pale hands.

And then the crying begins- out of fear, out of longing she cannot place.

It’s Naruto who finds her, the once young and fiery little fool now grown into a quiet and bright young man… So familiar, so strangely familiar, down to the way he’s begun to wear his hair long in middle age. He puts a hand on her shoulder and she reaches up from her seat on a bench she recognized but didn’t quite remember (did he leave it here? Perhaps someone else did…) and she strokes a lock of wild wheatgold and he smiles a smile she recognizes from someone… someone else, with a deep voice and stormcloud eyes.

It fades before it shows his face.

“Granny Tsunade, what are you doing out here- It’s nearly supper and too chilly for your old bones.”, he says, a gentle and affectionate taunt in his voice.

“Chilly to my bones nothing y’little…”, she grumbles, wisps of greywhite hair falling around her face as she looks once more at the stone, “I… I don’t. I don’t know why I’m here young Uzumaki- I don’t. Remember- I know I am supposed to be but I don’t remember… why.”

Her aged hand moves to her chest, over her heartbeat and tears rise in dim eyes, “All I know is I’ve lost something very important.”

Naruto’s eyes soften, and he look’s to Jiraiya’s grave to see the name has worn away with age and wear and weather. A soft croak, and an out-of-season sighting leaps onto the stone and swells its throat in another sound.

“Oh my- A foolish old toad that, popping out before spring can warm the ponds-”

The dam breaks, she chokes on air and her eyes go wide as she wails his name in a burning painful moment of clarity and collapses against her adopted grandson. Her nails, made sturdy and strong with age and loss dig deep into the fabric he wears and she weeps Jiraiya’s name again and again until she’s gently lifted in arms His teaching helped made strong and carried closer to the grave she both loves and loses in equal measure with every passing day.

And her weeping quiets itself as the clouds roll in, the color of eyes already beginning to fade from her memory again until the elder and younger are sitting in comfortable quiet until she speaks again.

“Hell, it’s cold. Come now young’n, let’s drag ourselves on back home now- I… I forget why we were outside so long to begin with, I’ve gotten forgetful in my old age.”

Naruto nods, hiding the pity in his eyes.

Of all things to take so strong a woman, it was something quiet and careful and sly. Losing shards of herself with every tick of a clock, turn of a day…

She lives to a hundred and four. She passes away in her sleep; reading a novel about a warrior who shared her grandson’s nickname that she found in a box in the back of her old closet months ago- things someone asked her to hold close, and keep safe.

Pictures of her youth. Pictures of faces she could no longer name, at the end.

But she knows, even as time slows for her that they are important.

And when she passes, she falls asleep with her grandson holding her hand in his warm ones and with teary smiles around her.

And a picture simply framed- a man with eyes like carved obsidian and a thin lipped frown; her own face, bright and youthful and wild…

And a man with a saltwhite tail of thick hair, his smile too big to be real and eyes like stormclouds on a winter night.


End file.
